Meeting the Enemy (18 page)

Most marksmen considered any target over 400 yards as ‘hard’ and shooting over extreme distances was as much about having fun as anything else. Jack Rogers and Charlie Shaw, snipers serving with the 1/7th Sherwood Foresters, were sent to an observation post, Charlie looking through a telescope, Jack using binoculars. The two opposing lines were at least 1,500 yards apart, with the German trenches on a low crest.

‘All of a sudden, Charlie said “Look!” and over the top, out over the German lines, two men appeared walking down the slope, both of them carrying shovels. They hadn’t got down a long way before they started digging quite a large hole.’

It became apparent to Charlie that the men were digging a latrine, utterly unaware that they could be overlooked. ‘They haven’t got the cheek to build a toilet there, surely,’ Charlie said. ‘I mean nobody’s going to use it, are they?’

‘It wasn’t very long before another soldier appeared,’ recalled Jack. ‘He came walking down to that toilet and began to pull his trousers down, sat on the toilet and had the nerve to pull out a newspaper.’

The German was the best part of a mile away and it was decided that Charlie would shoot and Jack would observe. ‘Charlie loaded his rifle, got it poised. “Ready?” I said “Yes.” “Right,” said Charlie, “watch out”, and he fired. I don’t know how near he was to the German but that man never stopped to pull his trousers up. He just got up and tore away as best he could over the top of the hill out of sight.’

Private Tom Tolson, serving with the 8th Kings Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, had trained at the Second Army Sniping School. He was frequently sent to a hidden observation post (OP) keeping a log of what he saw, noting enemy machine-gun posts suspected, known and inactive. He also looked for enemy OPs, sniping posts, obstacles in no-man’s-land, and the state of the enemy wire, its strength and depth. Finally, and as importantly, he watched the enemy, describing their activities and noting uniform insignia to aid identification of opposing units. Map references were written down with observations. ‘Enemy seen bailing water out of trench at point F 19 C 05 50 . . . German showing head and shoulders, another handing sandbags up to him apparently strengthening the trench.’ In noting what he saw, he also revealed the confidence with which the enemy openly carried on his activities:

1.05. Observed enemy looking over the trench for a few seconds and then disappeared wearing field grey uniform and round cap. One man looked over this particular spot every fifteen minutes. F 19 C 1 1¼ 8¼.

2.10. Observed earth being thrown out of the enemy front line trench at different points.

2.45. Observed four Germans looking over the parapet. One of them wearing glasses and very stout. They were talking to our men and waving their hands. The conversation lasted five minutes. German got up and held a piece of white bread in his hand. Showed it to our men and then commenced to eat it with pocket knife in his hand.

9.30. Observed two German officers showing half figure wearing polished peak cap and grey uniform, smoking and laughing and waving their hands to someone in our trench. They drank something out of a bottle, remained in view for three minutes, then disappeared again. Could have shot them at F 19 c 1¼ 2¼.

Intelligence was keenly pursued and included night-time raids that would not only cause disruption and alarm in the enemy’s lines but which offered an opportunity to seize a prisoner. Private Percy Ogley was involved in an attack on a German machine-gun post. The officer in charge led the men to within a few feet of the enemy, so close in fact that the Germans could be heard talking to one another while one man tapped the machine gun as if it were out of action. Then a German stepped forward, unfastening his trousers.

He saw us and stopped dead in his tracks. He was flummoxed. He didn’t know whether to run, shout, or what to do. Our officer decided for him. Lifting his revolver, the officer took aim and fired at point-blank range.

Down fell the German. His pals in the outpost took to their heels, and legged it back to their trenches.

‘Come on chaps,’ said the officer. ‘Quick as you can, lift him on your shoulders, come on, tout suite.’

Ogley was given the job of carrying the wounded German.

The officer and one man walked several paces in front and the other two followed behind. The poor Jerry was in some terrible pain, blood trickled down my back, and I felt ready to drop from exhaustion; all the time he groaned. The other chaps had their turns of carrying our prisoner, and finally we reached our lines, here we had a tot of rum, and examined the German’s wound.

Raiding the enemy’s positions was exceedingly risky, and could result in losses greater than those inflicted on the enemy. Private Ogley was involved in a further raid but the enemy’s artillery was alerted and a hasty retreat made under fire. In taking cover in a shell hole, Ogley became aware of another man’s presence; in the dark he took the man to be his officer, Lieutenant Thomas Bassett. As the gunfire died down, Ogley turned: ‘“Come along Sir,” I said, “I think we can make it now.” I had my face buried in my arms but when I looked at the chap next to me, I sent up a yell, jumped to my feet and off I went like hell.’

The man was a German in an advanced state of decomposition. The hideous sight galvanised Ogley into action but in his fright he ran the wrong way down a sunken lane where he was sent flying by a shell explosion. Shaken but relieved, he made the front-line trench where he was greeted with well-earned tea and a cigarette. Ogley reported what he had seen to Lieutenant Bassett who, to Ogley’s dismay, asked to be taken to the shell hole to ascertain the dead man’s regiment.

On our bellies we wiggled through the wet grass and up to the shell hole where I had seen the dead Jerry. By heck he was a tall chap. He must have been six feet eight inches. We two were like pygmies at the side of him. Our officer cut off the chap’s epaulettes on which were stamped the chap’s regiment, he also took a large canvas sheet from the chap’s back, searched all his pockets and got all the information he wanted. He said the chap was a Bavarian.

Although the British Tommy broad-brushed the enemy as Fritz, Boche or Hun, he appreciated that there were significant regional differences among German troops. Prussian soldiers were noted for their aggression, and a feud was widely believed to exist between the Scottish regiment of the Black Watch and the Prussians over alleged battlefield atrocities. The Bavarians had a bad reputation although not as bad as the Prussians, while, conversely, the Saxons were broadly liked for their easy-going nature and quiet disposition in the line. Perceived fracture lines between regions could be exploited, especially with the more approachable Saxons, as Second Lieutenant Barnett recorded in a letter home dated May 1915.

The other night a couple of men of the Rifle Brigade went up to the German wire with a newspaper account of how the Prussian gunners wiped out some Saxons who wanted to surrender. I hope our friends the 133rd [Saxon Regiment] will take it to heart, and do the dirty on their Prussian friends at the earliest opportunity.

As Anglo-Saxons, these men shared a common bond of sorts with German Saxons, and Saxons were not shy of reminding British troops of the link. It was the Saxons who initiated many of the festive truces the previous Christmas. And when large working parties were sent to work on the front line in January 1915, Lieutenant Graham Hutchinson, 2nd Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, watched as Saxons shared a heavy iron-headed hammer with men of the East Kent Regiment, the tool being alternately thrown across the barbed wire.

Serving in the same battalion was Lieutenant Alexander Gillespie. He noticed how Saxons used the general surfeit of water to float friendly bottled messages downstream to British trenches. And it was this placid nature that reasserted itself at the year’s end when, in November, flooded trenches forced Saxons again to abandon their positions. This time they walked about quite openly, bailing and pumping water from their front line into a mine crater. The following morning the Saxons were in cheery mood as Lieutenant Frank Hitchcock, 2nd Leinster Regiment, observed.

The enemy shouted out ‘Good morning’ to me . . . I watched six Germans coming up in the open, and getting into one of their advanced posts. Six more got out with their rifles slung, and with braziers in their hands, yelled ‘Good-bye’ to me and went back to their main trench. The relief started to try and fraternise with us immediately.

Second Lieutenant Barnett served in the same company as Hitchcock and had a soft spot for the Saxons, writing home about their cheerfulness and general bonhomie.

Yesterday evening we brought up a new machine gun and opened fire with it just after dark. The Germans shouted ‘try again’, ‘pretty good’ and ‘vot vos dat?’. It was quite amusing listening to them; they seem a very decent lot here (they’re Saxons) . . . They are always singing and doing ‘milk-o’ calls, especially when we fire volleys in the night.

Beyond the Leinsters’ trench stood a ruined farm that opposing sides visited in search of food. At night, when one of Barnett’s men went without permission to take chickens, he did not bother to go armed. ‘While so engaged he ran into a German [a Saxon] who was doing the same. As neither had a rifle, they nodded and passed on.’

Just as the British were keen to play on regional differences between the Germans, so were the Germans not averse to playing on fracture lines that might exist amongst the Allies. In the knowledge that the British were arriving on the Somme in the summer and autumn of 1915, the Germans were keen to sow discord, too. The only problem was that they were sometimes a little late: the French had gone, as Second Lieutenant Francis Smith discovered when his regiment, 1st Royal Scots, arrived in the line for the first time.

Yesterday the Huns fired some very funny looking little shells across into A Coys trenches. They didn’t explode but the nose cap of one came off and the cylinder was full of papers, giving the names of French prisoners taken, with the name and regiment of each man – page on page of names. There was also some printed matter, mostly stories and articles (all in French) showing Great Britain in a bad light. One was about Joan of Arc, telling how shockingly and treacherously and cruelly the English had behaved. Probably the Hun must have thought the French were occupying these trenches. The outside of the cylinder they fired them over in had ‘gazettes’ and also ‘news’ painted in white on the outside. We were very suspicious at first of some trick, and fired at the cylinders for some time (at a safe distance) to see if they would explode, but there was no explosive in them – just the papers.

When the British came to the Somme region, they found a front as quiet as any in which they had served. The Somme was a backwater; a place where the French and Germans indulged in short and sometimes intense spats, but nothing more. Private James Racine, 1/5th Seaforth Highlanders, arrived with his battalion in early September. At dawn on their first day in the line, the men discovered a welcome as cordial as any that could be imagined.

We found on our barbed wire entanglements a piece of paper on which was a written request that two or three of our men would, at a given time, proceed halfway across no-man’s-land and meet a similar number of Germans in order to exchange periodicals and souvenirs, as the French had been accustomed to doing. After a consultation, our interpreter and two men agreed and, at noon, met the enemy halfway; the heads of the troops on each side were above the parapets and no firing took place. Later, when we left the trenches, we were paraded before the Commanding Officer and severely reprimanded. He stated that ‘it was impossible to fight a man with one hand and give him chocolates with the other’. We were given to understand that any similar action in the future would be severely dealt with.

The level to which friendly relations developed could border on the preposterous, according to Captain John Laurie, 2nd Seaforth Highlanders, in a story that he heard and which he was inclined to believe. His battalion had come down from the Ypres Salient after suffering heavy casualties in the German offensive in April and May. The men had taken over the line east of Mailly-Maillet, a place where the former French occupants believed in neither raids nor shelling. Such was the rapport with the enemy that German officers came over nightly for a game of bridge, a game interrupted when, unaware of the relief, they arrived to find the British.

The British were there to stay. The real fun and games were about to begin.

There were men who wished for nothing better than to escape the war; men who looked forward to a wound serious enough to get them away from the fighting line, hopefully for good, but which did not mar their lives. One such man, a German, came to the attention of Private Frank Richards in March 1915. The German was using a trench mallet and, as he lifted the mallet, he deliberately left his hands and arms hanging in the air for a few seconds before bringing the mallet down. ‘We saw what his game was,’ wrote Richards. ‘To oblige him we started to take potshots at his hands or arms.’ Such a small target as an arm proved frustratingly easier to miss than to hit.